IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/apjors/v5y2021i3d10.1007_s41685-021-00208-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Influence of economic growth on environmental pollution in South Asia: a panel cointegration analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Md. Saiful Islam

    (University of Hail)

Abstract

Economic growth brings fortune to a society, but it worsens the ecosystem and results in environmental pollution through carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Despite extensive literature, the impact of economic growth on the environment is inconclusive, and the application of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the case of South Asia is very limited. This study investigated the validity of the EKC hypothesis for South Asia, examining the influence of economic growth on CO2 emissions by incorporating industrial value added (IVA), energy consumption (ENC), and urbanization as control variables. Using annual panel data on selected South Asian economies for the period of 1971–2018, this study applied the pooled mean group and fully modified OLS estimators, and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality test to accomplish our objective. The findings revealed that economic growth, ENC, and urbanization have significant impacts on environmental pollution in South Asia. Economic growth initially adversely affects the environment, but when GDP attains a certain threshold it takes an inverse turn supported by a negative value of squared GDP, then economic growth becomes a friend of the environment. Both urbanization and ENC add to environmental pollution, and IVA is pollution-neutral. The Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality also reveals that economic growth, squared GDP, urbanization, and ENC contribute to CO2 emissions. The outcomes possess implications for policymakers to increase the share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix, and emphasize rural–urban development and pollution-neutral safe production techniques to reduce environmental pollution for the region over the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Md. Saiful Islam, 2021. "Influence of economic growth on environmental pollution in South Asia: a panel cointegration analysis," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 951-973, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:apjors:v:5:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s41685-021-00208-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s41685-021-00208-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41685-021-00208-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41685-021-00208-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Bruyn, S. M. & van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. & Opschoor, J. B., 1998. "Economic growth and emissions: reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental Kuznets curves," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 161-175, May.
    2. Jalil, Abdul & Feridun, Mete, 2011. "The impact of growth, energy and financial development on the environment in China: A cointegration analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 284-291, March.
    3. Md. Saiful Islam, 2020. "Human Capital and Per Capita Income Linkage in South Asia: A Heterogeneous Dynamic Panel Analysis," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(4), pages 1614-1629, December.
    4. Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2005. "Energy demand and economic growth: The African experience," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 27(8), pages 891-903, November.
    5. Grossman, G.M & Krueger, A.B., 1991. "Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement," Papers 158, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    6. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2007. "A simple panel unit root test in the presence of cross-section dependence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(2), pages 265-312.
    7. Saboori, Behnaz & Sulaiman, Jamalludin, 2013. "CO2 emissions, energy consumption and economic growth in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries: A cointegration approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 813-822.
    8. Joakim Westerlund, 2007. "Testing for Error Correction in Panel Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(6), pages 709-748, December.
    9. Dumitrescu, Elena-Ivona & Hurlin, Christophe, 2012. "Testing for Granger non-causality in heterogeneous panels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1450-1460.
    10. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2021. "General diagnostic tests for cross-sectional dependence in panels," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 13-50, January.
    11. Zilio, Mariana & Recalde, Marina, 2011. "GDP and environment pressure: The role of energy in Latin America and the Caribbean," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7941-7949.
    12. Javid, Muhammad & Sharif, Fatima, 2016. "Environmental Kuznets curve and financial development in Pakistan," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 406-414.
    13. Kentaka Aruga, 2019. "Investigating the Energy-Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis for the Asia-Pacific Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-12, April.
    14. Richard T. Carson, 2010. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Seeking Empirical Regularity and Theoretical Structure," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(1), pages 3-23, Winter.
    15. William T. Harbaugh & Arik Levinson & David Molloy Wilson, 2002. "Reexamining The Empirical Evidence For An Environmental Kuznets Curve," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 541-551, August.
    16. Arrow, Kenneth & Bolin, Bert & Costanza, Robert & Dasgupta, Partha & Folke, Carl & Holling, C.S. & Jansson, Bengt-Owe & Levin, Simon & Mäler, Karl-Göran & Perrings, Charles & Pimentel, David, 1996. "Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 104-110, February.
    17. Acaravci, Ali & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2010. "On the relationship between energy consumption, CO2 emissions and economic growth in Europe," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 5412-5420.
    18. Ang, James B., 2007. "CO2 emissions, energy consumption, and output in France," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 4772-4778, October.
    19. Lean, Hooi Hooi & Smyth, Russell, 2010. "CO2 emissions, electricity consumption and output in ASEAN," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(6), pages 1858-1864, June.
    20. Ang, James B., 2008. "Economic development, pollutant emissions and energy consumption in Malaysia," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 271-278.
    21. Al-Mulali, Usama & Saboori, Behnaz & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2015. "Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Vietnam," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 123-131.
    22. Daniel Armeanu & Georgeta Vintilă & Jean Vasile Andrei & Ştefan Cristian Gherghina & Mihaela Cristina Drăgoi & Cristian Teodor, 2018. "Exploring the link between environmental pollution and economic growth in EU-28 countries: Is there an environmental Kuznets curve?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-28, May.
    23. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Khraief, Naceur & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2014. "Environmental Kuznets curve in an open economy: A bounds testing and causality analysis for Tunisia," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 325-336.
    24. Zoundi, Zakaria, 2017. "CO2 emissions, renewable energy and the Environmental Kuznets Curve, a panel cointegration approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1067-1075.
    25. Jihuan Zhang, 2021. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis on CO 2 Emissions: Evidence for China," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-16, February.
    26. Shafik, Nemat & Bandyopadhyay, Sushenjit, 1992. "Economic growth and environmental quality : time series and cross-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 904, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Muhammad Shahbaz & Avik Sinha, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2emissions: a literature survey," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 106-168, January.
    2. Muhammad Bilal Khan & Hummera Saleem & Malik Shahzad Shabbir & Xie Huobao, 2022. "The effects of globalization, energy consumption and economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions in South Asian countries," Energy & Environment, , vol. 33(1), pages 107-134, February.
    3. Dogan, Eyup & Seker, Fahri, 2016. "The influence of real output, renewable and non-renewable energy, trade and financial development on carbon emissions in the top renewable energy countries," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1074-1085.
    4. Ansari, Mohd Arshad, 2022. "Re-visiting the Environmental Kuznets curve for ASEAN: A comparison between ecological footprint and carbon dioxide emissions," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    5. Balsalobre-Lorente, Daniel & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Roubaud, David & Farhani, Sahbi, 2018. "How economic growth, renewable electricity and natural resources contribute to CO2 emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 356-367.
    6. Tiba, Sofien & Omri, Anis, 2017. "Literature survey on the relationships between energy, environment and economic growth," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1129-1146.
    7. Dogan, Eyup & Seker, Fahri, 2016. "Determinants of CO2 emissions in the European Union: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 429-439.
    8. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Sinha, Avik, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 emission: A survey of empirical literature," MPRA Paper 100257, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2019.
    9. Myo Myo Htike & Anil Shrestha & Makoto Kakinaka, 2022. "Investigating whether the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis holds for sectoral CO2 emissions: evidence from developed and developing countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(11), pages 12712-12739, November.
    10. Seker, Fahri & Ertugrul, Hasan Murat & Cetin, Murat, 2015. "The impact of foreign direct investment on environmental quality: A bounds testing and causality analysis for Turkey," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 347-356.
    11. Sofien, Tiba & Omri, Anis, 2016. "Literature survey on the relationships between energy variables, environment and economic growth," MPRA Paper 82555, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Sep 2016.
    12. Omri, Anis & Daly, Saida & Rault, Christophe & Chaibi, Anissa, 2015. "Financial development, environmental quality, trade and economic growth: What causes what in MENA countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 242-252.
    13. Iftikhar Yasin & Nawaz Ahmad & M. Aslam Chaudhary, 2020. "Catechizing the Environmental-Impression of Urbanization, Financial Development, and Political Institutions: A Circumstance of Ecological Footprints in 110 Developed and Less-Developed Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(2), pages 621-649, January.
    14. Tiba, Sofien & Belaid, Fateh, 2020. "The pollution concern in the era of globalization: Do the contribution of foreign direct investment and trade openness matter?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    15. Onafowora, Olugbenga A. & Owoye, Oluwole, 2014. "Bounds testing approach to analysis of the environment Kuznets curve hypothesis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 47-62.
    16. Gorus, Muhammed Sehid & Aslan, Murat, 2019. "Impacts of economic indicators on environmental degradation: Evidence from MENA countries," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 259-268.
    17. Mumin Atalay Cetin & Ibrahim Bakirtas, 2020. "The long-run environmental impacts of economic growth, financial development, and energy consumption: Evidence from emerging markets," Energy & Environment, , vol. 31(4), pages 634-655, June.
    18. Lars Sorge & Anne Neumann, 2017. "The Nexus of CO2 Emissions, Energy Consumption, Economic Growth, and Trade-Openness in WTO Countries," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1699, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Dogan, Eyup & Inglesi-Lotz, Roula, 2017. "Analyzing the effects of real income and biomass energy consumption on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: Empirical evidence from the panel of biomass-consuming countries," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 721-727.
    20. Zambrano-Monserrate, Manuel A. & Silva-Zambrano, Carlos A. & Davalos-Penafiel, Jose L. & Zambrano-Monserrate, Andrea & Ruano, Maria Alejandra, 2018. "Testing environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Peru: The role of renewable electricity, petroleum and dry natural gas," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 4170-4178.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    EKC hypothesis; CO2 emissions; Economic growth; Energy consumption; Industrial value added; Urbanization; South Asia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • O44 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Environment and Growth
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:apjors:v:5:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s41685-021-00208-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.